This Website Has Hundreds Of Cheap First And Business Class Airfares

Search for cheap first or business class airfares and you get a bunch of ads from various search sites and online travel agencies. Even the articles you find simply refer you back to these sites. Go to these sites and for the most part, it's nothing special. When you find low premium cabin fares it is usually on a niche airline where you might not be able to earn frequent flyer miles for your favorite program or it’s a convoluted routing.

For example, in looking on LastMinute.com, the best premium economy round-trip fare for random dates I entered between New York and London was over $3,500 for a routing that entailed taking a United Airlines flight from Newark to Toronto with domestic first-class seating, then a nearly five-hour layover before flying in Premium Economy on WestJet. What’s more, since WestJet isn’t part of a global alliance, you wouldn’t be able to credit your flights between Toronto and London back to your American Airlines, Delta Air Lines or United frequent flier programs. Looking at the same dates from Google Flights I found nonstop flights in Premium Economy for $2,391 from Virgin Atlantic Airways. For Business Class, Google gave me some good fares – all connections – just under $3,000, but when I searched for First Class rates shot up to over $9,000 round-trip, still less than full fare, but a big dent for most people’s pocketbooks.

So where can you get some really good deals to fly in comfort? I’m talking about roundtrip in business class on British Airways from London to San Francisco for $1,900 when normal fares range between $5,000 and $15,000. Check out the Premium Fare Deals forum on Flyertalk, one of about 100 various forums on the website and not readily apparent unless you are a regular and know it's there.

The site is mainly used by a combination of hardcore mileages and points junkies who hover in forums that specifically dissect the airline, hotel and car rental programs where they are focused on accumulating points. At the same time, newcomers stop in and ask basic questions, often after being frustrated by the suppliers themselves. Veterans guide them to what’s possible and what’s mainly a pipe dream, from how much compensation they can expect if their special meal isn’t loaded to what happens if they misspelled their name when buying the ticket online.

The Premium Fare Deals, however, is particularly interesting if you are flexible. Unlike mistake fares, which means an airline posted an incorrect fare and folks jump in and try to buy seats at pennies on the dollar until the airline catches on, the pricing in Premium Fare Deals is legitimate tariffs the airline is trying to sell on that route. It’s a big difference from what happens with mistake fares since when airlines realize their mistake, they don’t always honor the fare. Buyers nervously wait to get an email from the airline and can’t really breathe easy until after they are back, worried that at some foreign stopover, the airline will all of a sudden void their ticket.

In the case of Premium Fare Deals posted in Flyertalk, many of them are with airlines that are part of the three major global alliances – Oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam. That’s important because it enables you to get credit back into the three largest U.S.-based programs, AAdvantage from American, United’s MileagePlus and Delta’s SkyMiles.

So what can you find? It changes daily as members find and post deals. For example, member IAkH posted a round-trip business class fare on Air France or KLM from New York or Chicago to Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Bali for just $2,400 roundtrip. Looking at random dates in September, the same flights sell for between $3,600 and $5,000 with airlines like Emirates and Cathay Pacific charging over $6,000. If you are a Delta flyer, you can bank the flight miles on Air France and KLM into your SkyMiles account. Where can you book? The member even provides a link to the booking site; in this case, it was Orbitz.

Want to go to South Africa, but dreading the long flights in the back of the plane? Member Swingaling found a roundtrip Premium Economy deal from Toronto or Montreal to Johannesburg or Cape Town for just $1,260, about 70% less than the fares I found when I was looking at a trip last year. Since the flights are on British Airways, American Airlines fliers would earn miles into their AAdvantage account.

On June 11, member SoulFlyer posted a $2,200 Business Class roundtrip on either Delta or United from Las Vegas to Beijing, considerably below the typical fares, which range from $4,000 to $8,000 or more. Unlike many fares, when I checked today, the low prices were still available. But that’s not always the case.

Still, there are lots of good deals if you are flexible, and in some cases you don’t mind flying a positioning fare to get to wherever the starting point for the cheap fare is. Scrolling the Premium Fares section, I found Miami to Tenerife in Premium Economy for $986 roundtrip that would earn miles in my American Airlines account. There was also an American deal between Newark and Beijing in business class for $2,300. There was a Premium Economy deal on American from Los Angeles or San Francisco to Hong Kong for $994 roundtrip, while Qatar Airways (a partner in American’s program) was offering $2,900 Business Class roundtrip fares between New York, Chicago or Los Angeles to a variety of places in Southeast Asia and $1,700 to Delhi.

Not all the Premium Fare Deals are to exotic places. Back in June member George84 posted a JetBlue Mint fare from JFK or Boston to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle for just $399 one-way. In this case the poster credits his find to blogger God Save The Points, however, that’s the nice thing about this FlyerTalk forum. Not only are these deal-hunting members sharing their best finds, they also let you know where they found them and how to book, sort of a human metasearch engine.